Tales From the Palin

Posted on Oct 22, 2008

The ghoulish comic “Tales From the Crypt” is taking a spooky look at the possibility of a Sarah Palin presidency. An editorial by Gathy Gaines Mifsud, daughter of publisher William Gaines—who was a target of a ghastly 1950s Senate investigation on censorship—rails against Palin’s reported McCarthy-esque book-banning stunts while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

Wired:

If the thought of Sarah Palin becoming vice president or even president of the United States scares the living daylights out of you, well you’re not alone. Cathy Gaines Mifsud is evidently so unhappy about the possibility that she has written an editorial decrying the candidate in Tales From the Crypt, which features Palin on the cover beating the crap out of the comic’s venerable horror hosts with a hockey stick.

The editorial takes aim at Palin’s reported preference for book-banning back when she was mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska. It’s a sensitive subject in the Gaines family: Gaines Mifsud’s father, William Gaines, who was publisher of Mad Magazine and the original Tales From the Crypt, was the unfortunate subject of a Senate investigation in 1954 that aimed to censor his no-holds-barred horror comics. The hysteria was stoked by the publication of Dr. Frederic Wertham’s ludicrous book, Seduction of the Innocent, released the same year.

“Tales From the Crypt is not endorsing any political candidates, nor are we attacking any candidates,” Gaines Mifsud writes in the editorial. “What usually seems to be behind banning books is an attempt to repress ideas that may offer alternative political views. This is not only un-American—blatantly violating the very concept of free speech—but it is assuming that people are unable to come to their own informed conclusions.”